Count the Reasons for Not Earning Again, From Format and Route Rather Than Ability

What is being done ought not to be wrong. The skill has risen. The time is being poured in. Even so, the figure alone does not move. After a while the candidate causes narrow to one: perhaps something in me is lacking.

Seen from outside, there is something odd about the way it narrows. Any number of candidate causes can be raised, and the one actually examined is the one on your own side. The market, the route, the way the figure is decided — as candidates these hold the same standing. What remains, even so, is one.

The ability hypothesis is, in most cases, the candidate to be examined last. The reason is not that it is wrong. It is that it cannot be verified. Adopt an unverifiable explanation first and the other candidates are left uninvestigated. And a candidate that was never investigated becomes a candidate that was never there.

What is placed here are the items for counting the causes through to the end before attributing them to ability: format, route, pricing and accumulation, taken in order, each with one observable question attached. After that comes the order for telling which of the four is at work, and the position at which the ability hypothesis is to be used.

What is not covered is set out first as well. No list of ways to earn appears. Which fields are growing, which methods work at the moment — neither is the substance here. Nor are benchmark figures given. At what level the format should be changed, how many routes should be held, what the unit price should be: the meaning of these changes with the conditions of the household and the stage of the business, so handing over a number would hand over the judgement with it.

This starts from a state that has entered the stage of being able to deliver when the work is done. Where the level of what can be offered has not yet been reached, the matter is different. At that stage ability is often the binding constraint, and there is something to be done before counting the four terms.

Three of the four are answered by looking at this month’s numbers. The remaining one does not appear in this month’s numbers at all and is deferred for exactly that reason, so the fourth is given a different way of measuring. The counting itself finishes in one pass in every case. None of it is a record to be kept monthly.

What is left after the four have been counted is not the figure itself. It is a state in which what to try next is settled to one thing, and a state in which that verdict remains in a form that can be updated later. The count may well produce the answer that the present format should be kept. Even then, the content of that answer differs from what it was before the counting.

The Ability Hypothesis Is Adopted First Because It Looks Easy to Verify

The ability hypothesis comes first not because it looks correct. It comes first because it can be taken up at any time, because taking it up genuinely produces improvement, and because when it is wrong it gives no sign of being wrong.

Faced with a state of not earning, any number of candidate causes can be raised. The market, the route, the price, the format, the timing, and your own ability. Of these, ability alone has properties the others do not.

The first property is that improvement can be taken up at any time. The market cannot be moved by you. Changing the route takes time. With ability, a book can be read today, a course taken, practice begun. Ease of taking up connects directly to ease of being selected.

The second property is that improvement genuinely occurs. Skill rises, and whether it rose needs no confirming by anyone else. So the explanation the cause was ability is accompanied by a sense of the response progressing.

The third property is the problem. The ability hypothesis cannot be falsified.

Suppose the skill was raised and the figure did not move. There are two readings here. Ability was not the cause, and ability is still insufficient. Both explain the same observation. And the latter is consistent with the explanation held until then.

Under this structure, the hypothesis cannot be discarded however far results fail to arrive, because the possibility that raising it further might get there always remains. As long as the possibility remains, no reason arises to investigate the other candidates.

The philosopher of science Karl Popper drew his line between claims by falsifiability — being able to say in advance what would be observed if the claim were false (Popper, Logik der Forschung, Julius Springer, 1934; Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963). A caution is required here. What Popper’s criterion separates is not correct claims from mistaken ones. It separates claims in a shape that can be put to a test from claims that survive whatever the result.

The ability hypothesis has the latter shape. If the figure moves, that is evidence the ability rose; if it does not, that is evidence it is still short. Supported either way, the explanation receives no information from the result. The four terms set out below are each in a shape that allows this would mean it is wrong to be said in advance. That is where the difference lies.

That there are cases where ability genuinely is insufficient is a fair point. There are. And in those cases raising ability is the correct move. What is said here is not that ability is not the cause, but that before making ability the cause, the verifiable candidates should be eliminated first.

In the founding period ability genuinely is the principal constraint much of the time. Where the level that can be offered has not been reached, no trade holds however much else is put in order. What becomes an issue is after a certain level has been reached. When the figure does not move even after entering the stage of it can be delivered if done, the cause often sits elsewhere.

Adopt the ability hypothesis and the direction of investment leans entirely that way. Time goes to study, qualifications are taken, tools are assembled. None of this is wrong, and the funds are finite. And while the funds go entirely to ability, neither route nor pricing nor format moves.

The human capital theory formalised by Gary S. Becker (Becker, Human Capital, Columbia University Press, 1964) positioned investment in education and training as the formation of capital, and handled the proposition that such investment raises future productive capacity and earnings. The proposition presumes that productive capacity is reflected in wages through the labour market. Where you trade on your own, two further stages sit between productive capacity and price: route and pricing.

First Term — Format. What Is the Figure Paid Against?

What decides where the ceiling sits is not ability but what the figure is paid against. Time, job count, outcome, or a right. This is the first structural term.

Where payment is against time or job count, the figure is proportional to the input. Being proportional means the ceiling on input is the ceiling on the figure. And input has a physical ceiling.

Where payment is against outcome, the proportionality loosens. For the same time, a larger outcome means a larger figure. The measure of outcome, however, sits on the other side, so the right to decide the figure sits there too.

Where payment is against a right — where something made once sells repeatedly, or where the figure attaches to use itself — the relation between input and figure is cut. Here what produces the ceiling is not time but the size of the demand.

The observable question is one. Between a month with a full day taken off and a month without one, does the total paid in change? If it does, the format is the time type by exactly that much. This way of measuring, and what can be read from it, is handled in Having no time is not a problem of management. Here it is used as an instrument for reading the position of the ceiling.

That the present format is being used because changing format is difficult is true, and there is nothing whatever wrong with working in the present format. What is said is that the fact of the format deciding the ceiling should be counted among the candidate reasons for the figure not moving.

Uncounted, a state of having reached the ceiling is read as a shortfall of ability. If the ceiling has been reached, raising ability does little to move the figure, because what places that ceiling is something other than ability.

Even with a time-type format there is room for the figure to move considerably: room to move upwards within the distribution of unit prices. This room is finite, though, and once the movement is complete there is no next move. How much room remains can be judged from where the present unit price sits in the distribution for that field.

Count the format and the position of the work poured in so far becomes visible. Once it is clear that the ceiling is decided by format, it becomes clear that the work of approaching the ceiling and the work of moving the ceiling itself are different things. And it can become clear that the bulk of what has been done so far was the former.

This is information that is difficult to receive. Without it, however, continuing the former goes on looking like the only option. A state in which one option is visible is not a state of choosing.

And once the position is visible, one more item of material for judgement is added. If much room remains up to the ceiling, continuing the former is rational. If little remains, the return on the same work goes on falling. Which of the two it is cannot be known without counting the format. Uncounted, the phenomenon of falling returns comes to be read as decline on your own side.

Second Term — Route. To Whom, and By What Means, Does It Reach?

What is stacked on a borrowed route does not stay on your side. The second structural term is whether the route now reaching you is owned or borrowed.

However good what is offered, no trade holds without a route reaching those who need it. Thus far it is self-evident. What is not self-evident is that routes divide into those that can be owned and those that are borrowed.

Intermediary venues, job boards, referrals, routes entering as part of another company’s customer acquisition. In these, the conditions are decided by the route’s side. The commission, the order of display, an abrupt change of policy — all outside your judgement.

A route that reaches directly, by contrast — a state of holding the contact details on your own side — lets the conditions be decided by you. Even at the same there are customers, these two differ entirely in character.

The observable question is this. If the route now in use became unusable tomorrow, where would next month’s requests come from?

If no answer emerges, the route is borrowed. The vessel receiving the record then sits on the route’s side.

Even on a borrowed route, stacking a record brings requests by name. It does. The question is where that naming passes through. If it comes through the same place, the route is still borrowed. If contact details have been exchanged and it now comes directly, only then has the route moved.

This move does not occur automatically. It depends heavily on whether the work of moving it was done deliberately. And intermediary venues generally restrict direct dealing. That there is a restriction is what shows where the value resides.

A borrowed route is not bad. For speed of getting started, a borrowed route is advantageous. Building a direct route from zero takes time. The trouble is years passing while still borrowing.

While the route remains borrowed, the right to price is borrowed along with it. At intermediary venues a going rate is displayed. The displayed rate works as a reference point. Buyer and seller alike judge against that figure. So while it appears that the figure is being decided by you, what is actually happening is the selection of a position within the displayed distribution.

The second term, that is, connects to the third. As long as the route is borrowed, pricing is only half in your hands.

There is one further matter of number in routes. When there is only one route, it is not a route but a dependence.

In a state where requests come from a single route, a change in that route’s conditions strikes income directly. And the conditions can change without notice. Change the mechanism of display and requests can halve while the same things are being done.

The verdict issued here is I have suddenly stopped being selected. Nothing having changed on your side, the cause is read as a decline in your own quality. In fact it may be that only the settings on the route’s side changed. And the settings on the route’s side are invisible from here. What is invisible does not come up as a candidate cause.

Third Term — Pricing. Who Is Deciding the Figure?

The figure is decided neither by cost nor by time input nor by height of skill, but by the set of things the buyer is comparing against. The third structural term is who is placing that object of comparison.

A buyer finds it hard to judge in isolation whether a figure presented is high or low. Something is usually compared against. Where what is compared against is other sellers doing similar work, the figure settles within that distribution. Where what is compared against is what is lost by not having the work done, the figure lands in an entirely different position.

The substance of pricing, that is, is the setting of the object of comparison. It is not the work of deciding a number.

That the object of comparison is decided by the buyer as they please, so it cannot be moved from here — this point is half right. What the buyer ultimately compares against is not your decision. The material for comparing, however, is put out by you.

Present in the form I will perform this work in so many hours and the buyer compares hours of work. Begin from what the absence of this is producing and the buyer compares something else. At identical content, the order of presentation changes the object of comparison.

Some settings leave the object of comparison immovable: the buyer’s procurement mechanism fixes the frame of comparison in advance. Competitive quotes, a fixed rate table, a set format for placing orders. Here the object of comparison is decided as an institution and does not move with how it is presented.

This is an important point of discrimination. Whether pricing is in your hands changes with the kind of buyer. And it is common for the cause of a figure not moving to be not technique in pricing but the other party’s procurement format.

Try to raise the figure and the experience of being refused increases first. Being refused is fine to factor in from the start. A presentation that changes the object of comparison does not pass with a party who was judging within the earlier frame. That it does not pass is information only about that party still being in the earlier frame. By sensation, however, it is received as your offering having been valued poorly.

Once received that way, verification of the pricing stops after one attempt. Return to the earlier figure after a single refusal and what would happen if the object of comparison were changed remains unknown.

Further, this verification carries an asymmetry. When it passes, one case confirms it; when it does not pass, one case shows nothing.

The reasons for refusal are several. The figure was too high, the object of comparison did not move, the other party’s budget was fixed from the start, the timing was poor. From the result of one case, which of these it was cannot be identified. And yet the explanation that tends to surface for the one refused is a single one: the figure was too high.

So verification of pricing can only be done in numbers. Make the same presentation to five parties and look at the distribution. The observable question is how many of the last five cases had the figure presented by you. React case by case, dropping and raising, and what is being measured is not the pricing but the other party’s circumstances on the day.

Fourth Term — Accumulation. Is This Month Lifting Next Month’s Starting Point?

At the same figure earned, this month’s yield either remains into next month or does not, and that difference is settled apart from ability and input. The fourth structural term is whether accumulation is occurring.

In a format that leaves nothing, next month repeats the same thing from zero. At the same figure, the state is the same. Here the position does not change however much time passes.

In a format that leaves something, what was made this month works next month too. The content made, the list gathered, the mechanism established. Here, at the same figure, next month’s starting point has risen.

The observable question comes out as this. Of what was done last month, is anything still working this month?

If nothing is, it is not accumulating. Pour in a great deal at high ability and, in a format that does not leave anything, nothing is left. However thick the input side is made, the shape of the vessel does not change.

Skill and trust are accumulating, which is true. They are. The question is whether there is a route by which they connect to the figure. Skill can rise and the figure not move where the unit price of the trade is fixed. Trust can stack and return to zero when the contact changes, if that trust sits inside one individual on the other side.

Accumulation tells only where what is accumulated is placed on your own side and there is a route connecting it to the figure. Lose either one and accumulation occurs without appearing in income.

During the period of moving to an accumulating format, income falls, or at least does not rise, because the work of making something that remains does not produce revenue that month. Leave the existence of this period out of the calculation and a verdict of it did not work after all is issued midway through the move.

Whether accumulation is occurring cannot be observed in the short term. Over a month, a format that leaves something and one that does not look alike. The difference takes months to years to appear. And by the time it appears, the reason that format was chosen has often been forgotten.

So whether it accumulates is judged by design rather than by result. That is, ask will this remain? before beginning. Try to judge afterwards and by the time the verdict arrives the time has passed.

And this term has a property the other three do not. The fourth term alone barely appears in this month’s figure.

The first to third terms show up in this month’s or next month’s numbers when moved. The fourth does not. The work of building accumulation barely raises this month’s revenue. So in a state of looking only at the accounts, this work tends to appear as something there was no need to do.

Here is the mechanism by which the fourth term is deferred. Not doing it causes no trouble this month, and doing it changes nothing this month. From neither direction does a reason to take it up arise. The reason often arrives when you notice, three years on, that the position is the same. By then only the result remains: three years without accumulation.

The mechanism by which this judgement grows harder over time — the period invested itself becoming a weight on the judgement — is handled in A side business does not earn because it adds a second form of selling time.

Telling Which of the Four Is at Work

The identification has an order, and the principle is upstream to downstream. Repair the pricing alone while the format is the time type and the position of the ceiling stays where it was.

The first term to look at is format. If the total paid in falls by exactly the days taken off, the ceiling is decided by format. Improving the other three in this state does not move the ceiling itself. If room remains up to the ceiling, however, the other three do tell.

Room is judged by seeing where the present income sits relative to the level reachable in that format. If there are cases of people earning considerably more than you in the same format, room remains. If none can be found, the position is near the ceiling.

Next, look at the second term (route). If requests are not arriving, this is where it is jammed. If they are arriving, move on.

Next, look at the third term (pricing). If requests arrive and the figure is small, it is here. Lay out the last five and count the ones where you named the figure first. If zero, pricing is not in your hands.

Last, look at the fourth term (accumulation). Unlike the other three, this tells on the figure from next month onwards rather than the present one. So it is not a direct cause of not earning now, and it is a cause of three years in the same position.

What to do when all four are jammed: the order does not change in that case. Where the format is the time type, the route is borrowed and pricing sits on the other side, trying to fix pricing first works poorly. On a borrowed route, half of the pricing sits on the other side from the start.

The further upstream, the more time and funds are required to move it. So in practice the order taken is often to produce room downstream and use it as the funds for moving upstream. This does not contradict the principle. Identification of the cause runs from upstream; taking it up runs from what the funds allow.

Count the four terms and unease arises at the fact that ability does not appear once. All four being structural items, what you yourself should do does not emerge directly. Ask here what, then, am I to do? and the discussion returns to ability. In fact, deciding which of the four to move is itself the thing to do next.

The work of identification has one further effect of its own. Having finished counting, you will want to stop the work currently under way.

The moment it is clear that the second term is jammed, the skill-building and job-handling currently under way look as though they were wasted. This appearance is not accurate. Trades under way are producing income, and that income is the funds for moving the second term.

So identification and switching are separate stages. Knowing where the jam is is not a reason to stop the present work. Whether to stop is decided by whether substitute funds exist. Mix the two and the business becomes unstable every time a cause is identified.

At What Position to Use the Ability Hypothesis

If none of the four is jammed and the figure still does not move, that is where ability comes forward as a candidate. And at this point the ability hypothesis has a verifiable shape, because the other candidates have been eliminated.

The format is not the time type, the route is on your side, the figure is presented by you, and accumulation is occurring. If the figure still does not move, the possibility remains that the level of what is offered does not match that figure.

Raise the skill in this state and whether it worked can be judged, because the other variables are fixed. The same hypothesis takes a testable shape or an untestable one according to where it is placed.

May ability be left alone until such a state is reached? It is not being left alone. What is said is not to stop improving ability but not to use ability as the first explanation for the figure not moving. The work of raising skill may continue independently of the identification of the cause.

The distinction is this. Raising skill because you are not earning and raising it because you want to raise it are the same act and different judgements. The former is a response grounded in an estimate of the cause, so if the estimate is off, time is lost. The latter contains no estimate of a cause in the first place.

In some fields the level decides the figure directly. Where the quality of what is offered appears in a form anyone can compare, the distance between ability and figure is short. Here the ability hypothesis is sound as a first candidate. So the procedure of counting the four terms tells most in fields where quality is hard to compare from outside.

Place the ability hypothesis last and, for a while, the cause sits outside you. This is a position that can function as consolation and as an evasion of responsibility alike. One line is placed to prevent that. All four terms are things you selected and built. The format was selected, the route was selected, the manner of pricing was selected, and whether to accumulate was selected. To speak of structure is to speak of choice; it is not to say that there was no choice.

And treating it as choice has a practical meaning too, because what is chosen can be chosen again.

Treat it as a shortfall of ability and the only response is raise it. Raising takes time, and how far to raise before it is enough is unknown. Treat it as choice and the response becomes select something else. This can be executed from next month, given the conditions.

Here lies the practical merit of counting the four terms first. The difference is between seeing the same situation in a form where one slow response is visible, and seeing it in a form where four responses on different timescales are visible. A difference in how it appears becomes, directly, a difference in the next move.

What Is Left in Hand After the Counting

What is left is a state in which what to try next is settled to one thing. Once it is known which of the four is jammed, the next move comes from there. Try things without knowing and whether it worked is not known either.

One more thing is left: the verdict is held in an updatable form.

The ability hypothesis, once adopted, is rarely updated, because it cannot be falsified. The four terms are each tied to observable numbers. What is paid in on days taken off, where requests come from if the route is cut, the number of cases where the figure was presented by you, what from last month is still working this month. Numbers change when conditions change.

Counting the four terms does not mean the figure moves at once, though. Counting is measurement, not a response. What is done after measuring is a separate judgement, and one option is to move nothing now.

That the candidate causes narrow to your own side is not a matter of biased judgement. Of the candidates, only the one on your own side was in a shape that could be looked into today, on the spot. The other four each require a question to be prepared first, and until that question is in hand they do not rise as candidates at all. A candidate that never rose was not rejected; it was never there.

What counting the four terms carries out is the moving of the ability question to a position where it can be used. The four terms are measurement; ability is a hypothesis. A hypothesis that comes after the measurement can be seen to fail when it fails. Reverse the order and things proceed without the measurement ever beginning.

The time the counting takes is one pass through four questions. And the answers come out on the spot: three from this month’s numbers, the fourth from setting last month beside this month. Which of them to move afterwards is decided by the funds and the conditions of the household. A conclusion of moving none of the four also comes out, and what is then in hand is the reason for not moving them.

How the format of the first term produces a ceiling is dissected in detail from the economic side. The ceiling built into selling time is handled in Getting out of the labour-intensive form, and the dissection from the side of the unit price in Before negotiating a higher rate, know how the figure is decided.

The third term, pricing — the point that the setting of the object of comparison decides the figure — is handled more directly in Do not start pricing from cost.